On Monday, D actually arrived home in time and with energy to go to dinner with me. We picked our way, barefoot, down Waikiki beach in the dusk to Duke's, there to eat macadamia-crusted opah amidst the tipsy, bikini-clad crowds.

I have made an evening habit of this beach walk in the days since, although D hasn't since gotten off work in time to join me, wearily citing all sorts of cinematic anxieties about losing the light. Each day I walk a bit farther, till the stroll to the end and back talks me about an hour and a half.

It was the day after our dinner that I saw these dragon boats, with a toddler peering at their keels and a man fast asleep in the hull of the one on the left. I was particularly charmed, somehow, by the way the dragons peeked out over the parking barriers, as if exhausted and in need of a bit of a chin rest.

I have settled into a contented pattern here, one that looks something like this:

Sometime between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m., D gets up and goes to work. Somewhat, um, after that, I get up. I read, I blog, I sit on the balcony looking out at the ocean. I clean, deal with email, work, snack on fresh pineapple.

At some point, I gird my skin with a veritable armor of sunscreen, and venture forth. I pick up a fallen blossom from one of the trees in the hotel garden and tuck it behind my ear. I wander around the lagoon to the ocean proper, kick off my sandals, and wade into the surf. Then I walk, past delighted toddlers on their first visit to the ocean, experienced surfers with the world's most flawless human forms, and (on one occasion) a couple of women posing sexily in front of the sunset ("Don't worry - it's for our husbands!" they cried when I paused to let them take the photo. I guffawed. Well, that's all right, then.).

I walk and walk over the wide variety of textures the sand takes on along Waikiki beach (is this a trick of the tides, or does each hotel haul a different quality of sand in to supplement their own patch of waterfront?). The waves crash up around me - by the time I go back to the room to meet D when he gets back at 8 or 9 my dress will be drenched up to the waist - and I gather soaking folds of fabric up in my hands as I wend my way. The whole world seems saturated in color as the sun sets, and the landscape changes drastically from minute to minute.

The result, I fear (I hope?) is that my O'ahu Diaries from this point forward will become decreasingly narrative and increasingly pictorial, a series of color studies in cloud and surf. Be forewarned.